On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 11:53:18AM +0200, Vitux wrote
> More stuff:
> I did a
> # modprobe ne2k-pci
> and I get this:
> ne2k-pci..: PCI NE2000 clone 'Realtek RTL-8029* at I/O 0x20a0, IRQ
> 9.
> eth0: RealTek RTL-8029 found at 0x20a0, IRQ 9, 00:00:B4:B8:94:CC
> #
> I suppose this means that the modular driver has been installed in
> the kernel and detected my NIC. So far, great.
>
> Wonder why kmod won't autoload it when I do "ifconfig-yadayada up" ?
> BTW: What does the hex-part at the end mean?
>
It has no reason to associate this driver with eth0; you need to
give it a big hint as to which module to use for the interface.
Try adding
alias eth0 ne2k-pci
to /etc/modutils/aliases and running update-modules as root.
The hex string is your card's MAC, an allegedly unique
identifier that is used for packet addressing at the physical
link layer for machines on your local network. The first
few octets probably identify the card's manufacturer, the rest
are up to them.
I say allegedly unique because some early clone NICs (back
when a cheap name-brand NIC might be $300) had cloned firmware
that gave each card the same MAC, or used ranges that
had been assigned to other manufacturers; that meant if you used
bad cards, you might have to sort out which ones couldn't
share a network.
MACs are associated with IPs using ARP ("Address Resolution
Protocol"). You can monitor the MAC-to-IP translation on your
network with something like this (assuming your network is
192.168.1.0/24):
$ ping -c 2 192.168.1.255
$ /usr/sbin/arp -a
You won't see your own machine in the arp cache, because your
TCP/IP stack recognizes packets addressed to itself and doesn't
get as far as attempting ARP for local addresses.
John P.
--
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http://www.mdt.net.au/~john Debian Linux admin & support:technical services
